During one of his missions trips to Udmurtia, Jack Gilliland, pastor of Rea Valley Baptist Church, Flippin, Ark., asked a local believer, “Are we making any difference? Are we just coming and entertaining you, or is this helping?”
“Every time you come,” the man responded, “it’s like you drop a rock in a pool and whatever foggy, murky stuff that’s on the top brushes away a little bit — and we see a little more clearly.”
Today Gilliland volunteers from his Arkansas home as an International Mission Board (IMB) virtual strategy coordinator, which he described as “filling in where the missionaries can’t go or live.”
The Udmurts, an unreached people group in Russia, were the focus of Southern Baptists’ Day of Prayer and Fasting for World Evangelization emphasis in 2007. Since then, answers to those prayers are bringing Living Water to the spiritually thirsty in the Republic of Udmurtia.
One of the 2007 prayer requests asked Southern Baptists to pray that God would call an individual to coordinate efforts among the Udmurts. Shortly afterward, the Lord burdened Gilliland’s heart.
He began to pray with believers around the world for God to send someone to Udmurtia to live full time and serve as a catalyst among the churches. Through word of mouth, e-mails and the Internet, Gilliland amassed a prayer network of more than 1,000 people who regularly intercede for Udmurtia.
During the past three years, Gilliland also led multiple short-term volunteer teams to serve as “virtual missionaries” in the absence of full-time missionaries.
Volunteers work alongside and encourage the seven small Baptist churches in Udmurtia and help approximately 200 indigenous believers minister to and present the gospel to villagers. Less than 0.3 percent of Udmurtia’s population is considered evangelical Christian.
“You go in and you build relationships,” Gilliland said. “You live there like you would at home, just like a missionary does, and you share the Lord.”
Gilliland and his prayer network recently saw their prayers answered by two American couples.
Charlie and Heather Murphy first met Will and Marie Thompson while attending school together in Texas. Their journey began when Charlie read the IMB prayer guide for the Udmurts.
“The Holy Spirit moved in me that day when I read that article,” Charlie said. At that moment he felt the Lord say to him, “I love these people, and that’s where I want you to go.”
About that same time, Will heard in class about the great need for people groups in Central and Eastern Europe to hear the gospel. As Charlie and Will shared these experiences with one another, they realized it was not coincidence but the providence of God. They began to pray for and research the Udmurts, and God kindled their hearts for the people group. The Murphys and Thompsons are now Russian-language students living in Izhevsk, the capital city of Udmurtia. They have learned to rely on the Lord through prayer as they transition to the new culture and language.
“The most difficult thing is wanting so badly to be able to explain the gospel to people but not having the vocabulary to do it,” Charlie said.
“I don’t just want to be a language student. I want to be able to share God’s love with people, and right now I don’t have the vocabulary to do that. That causes a lot of tears some days, just weeping over the lostness and feeling like there’s nothing you can really do about it, and then hearing God’s still, small voice saying, ‘You can pray.’ That will forever be the most powerful weapon you have, even when you can speak the language fluently.”
The couples pray for the day when more Udmurts will put their trust in Christ and boldly share their faith.
A local pastor believes Charlie and Will can be an encouragement to Udmurt believers, inspiring them to evangelize their friends and families.
Gilliland agreed. “The trails have been blazed, and we’ve laid some good groundwork,” he said. “We’ve built a trust relationship with the people so that now it’s a matter of them catching the vision.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — Some names have been changed for security reasons. (BP)
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